Anais Nin reads “Under a Glass Bell”: an audio recording
Anais Nin circa 1970
By the time Anaïs Nin returned to New York in late 1939, driven from Paris by the war, she had already begun writing a series of short stories that would be collected under the title of Under a Glass Bell. According to Benjamin Franklin V’s Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts, Nin self-published (Gemor Press) the original collection in 1944, which contained the following stories: “Birth,” “House Boat,” “Je Suis le Plus Malade Des Surrealistes Antonin Artaud,” “The Labyrinth,” “The Mohican,” “The Mouse,” “Rag Time,” and “Under a Glass Bell.” For the 1948 Dutton edition, Nin added the titles “The Child Born out of the Fog,” “The Eye’s Journey,” “Hejda,” and “Through the Streets of My Own Labyrinth.”
Before Nin released her now-famous diaries in 1966, she spent decades promoting her fiction, sometimes by reading passages or entire stories during lectures—in this case it is the title story “Under a Glass Bell.” It is very possible that this audio recording was made not long after Swallow Press re-released the collection in the early 1960s.
The story, as Nin reads it, is reminiscent of the incestuous isolation that is the theme of her first fictional work House of Incest or Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles. Nin’s delivery gives the story a dimension that may otherwise be undetectable. It is advised to empty your mind and let Nin’s words take it on a short but fascinating journey.
To listen to the 18 minute sound clip, click here. (Courtesy of The Anaïs Nin Trust; all rights reserved)
To listen to Young and Hugh Guiler discuss Nin’s diary, click here.
For more information on Under a Glass Bell, click here.
To order the digital version of Under a Glass Bell, click here.
To order the print version of Under a Glass Bell, click here.
A list of available Anais Nin titles
How does one sort through hundreds of websites to find elusive Anais Nin titles? We’ve compiled a concise list to help you out.
To purchase a book that was once a part of Rupert Pole’s and Anais Nin’s personal collection at their Silver Lake house in Los Angeles, including rare and out of print titles, click here.
To find and purchase any title Swallow Press published (virtually all of Nin’s fiction and other titles as well), click here.
In the past year, several Nin titles have been made available as ebooks. To search the ever-growing list, click here.
To find the print versions of Nin’s (both original and unexpurgated) diaries, click here.
To locate Nin’s erotica, click here.
To examine or order print versions of A Cafe in Space, the only current Anais Nin literary journal, click here.
Sky Blue Press has the only print version of the original The Winter of Artifice, a facsimile of the Obelisk Press edition that was, according to Nin herself, banned in America. There are still copies of this limited printing left. To find out about the book, or to order, click here.
A complete list of all of Nin’s fictional characters is collected in Anais Nin Character Dictionary. To learn about this title, click here.
Are we missing anything? If so, leave a comment and we’ll attempt to answer all questions.
Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts review
Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts by Benjamin Franklin V has been reviewed by someone who happens to know a bit about Nin bibliography—Valerie Harms, whose Magic Circle Press published Waste of Timelessness and Other Early Stories, culled from Nin’s early fiction. In Harms’ review, she concludes: “This book belongs in the personal library of all those who love Nin’s work and to university and public libraries around the world.” You can read the entire review by clicking here.
Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary
Both A Café in Space, Vol. 6 and Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts are now available for shipping. All of you who have ordered either or both titles will be receiving yours very soon.
Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts
Benjamin Franklin V, arguably the world’s foremost Nin scholar, has been in the business of sorting out the facts of Anaïs Nin’s bibliography for decades. Not only did he co-establish the first true Nin periodical (Under the Sign of Pisces), he has compiled Nin’s works thoroughly and edited a book of Nin’s contemporaries’ memories of Nin (Recollections of Anaïs Nin by her Contemporaries). He also spearheaded and introduced the recently published uncut Obelisk Press version of The Winter of Artifice. Now, Franklin has given all Nin readers and scholars an invaluable gift: a complete list of descriptions and bibliographic sources for each and every character Nin use in her published fiction, more than 800 of them, from Abelard to Zora, with Djuna, Jay, Lillian, and Sabina in between. Anaïs Nin Character Dictionary and Index to Diary Excerpts also includes an index of every person, place, or title mentioned in every diary excerpt to appear outside the published diaries before they were printed, and this includes diaries that remain unpublished to this day.
This book will be released the same day as Volume 6 of A Café in Space, Anaïs Nin’s 106th birthday, Feb. 21, 2009.